Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone has offered German prosecutors $100m in order to make his bribery charges go away.

The 83-year-old billionaire went on trial in April, charged with bribery, but those charges might now go away if he can line the correct German pockets with the right amount of money.

“Bribery is a very serious charge, that we take extremely seriously when people don’t pay us to forget about it,” explained one German prosecutor.

“Having Mr Ecclestone pay us $100m in cash to avoid a potential 10-year prison term will be exactly the sort of deterrent we need.”

“You should not read anything into the fact that we want it paid in used banknotes no bigger than a fifty.”

“This arrangement will make sure that Billionaires think twice before bribing anyone in future – because they will know they’ll have to offer a really big bribe to the government to make it go away at a later date.”

Ecclestone bribery charge

A spokesperson for the Formula One chief explained that claiming that he was bribing his way out of a bribery charge was the wrong way to look at it.

They explained, “Look, paying someone lots of money to conveniently make something go away is very different to illegally paying someone lots of money to conveniently make something go away.”

“You’re just jealous because you don’t have £100m going spare to make people do what you want them to do.”

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